Well on diff 8, random everyone except technologists and core. I have always been able to maintain a steady flow of economy even at the start. Sometimes I may hit the dumps, but I've been getting better at that. Placing smaller increments rather than larger all at once.
To be honest, if your sitting for 2 hours in the game without a couple more planets. Then what are you doing? O_o?
Honestly I thought mkII extractors were worth it at the 12/13/14 level, mainly due to the halved build time, rather than mainly for the increased generation. If you don't assist them with engineers, having the mk II as opposed to the mk I is worth ~ 150*13 ~= 2k resources every time you lose a harvester. I honestly don't think that getting a free upgrade of all existing harvesters when you unlock them would be hugely overpowered though and would reduce micro? Of course, with this logic, the mkIII are in some sense worth less than the mkII's while costing more knowledge, which makes them not really worth unlocking(aka since you only save 75 seconds of build time now, rather than 150). Imo the mkIII's need an extra boost of some sort, either making them 12/14/18? or perhaps giving the mkIII's a hp or shield boost or perhaps cutting the build time by even more and/or reducing the build cost.
A extractor that came with a greater amount of HP/shielding would perhaps draw me in to get them early game. But then again there is already the exo for those that don't last very long imo. I just let my harvesters take the hit, they're not really so important.
However, I see I'm not the only one looking for something more 'eye popping' to drive one to get. If your hitting rock bottom right off the bat, your building to much and not enough ships. I watched someone in my game roll on hardly anything but turrets. about an hour in the game.. Another and Myself had about 7 planets ready for take over... however he wasn't the greatest at knowing what he was doing it seemed as he had TP raiders he could have easily handled most incoming waves with that amount of turrets. Only had that one planet though.
We were giving him 100k-200k resources every so often to splurg on and get him moving along. Counting the other guy we had maybe 4-5 planets already taken over and I was moving in taking more before sealing a choke point. I had improvised to force the AI through one wormhole very early in the game towards the guy who was bunkering in.
If your this kind of person, then you'd probably rage quit like he did when nearly 4k ships, a min apart per 2k walked right in and just obliterated your defenses that you spent nearly 2hours on. Wouldn't you? =P
Well that is exactly what happened, and I asked him if he'd be alright and to be sure his ships were on defense mode since they can tp and help out. first wave hit, he struggled... without his ships btw. XD but he managed so i didn't think he'd be whipped. Next thing I know i'm taking over more planets, and a msg says someone lost a home. I'm like O_O! what?! *looks over seeing barely any ships near the home CMD, no shield, and no home base of the turret guy* what happened? 'i don't know, wasn't paying attention to my cmd' <..<
Heh.. then he said he had to go. Haven't seen him since. XD
